A sprawling new retail destination has landed across from Westfield Southcenter, where TESO Life just opened its latest Tukwila, Washington store packed with snacks, beauty products, housewares and miniature building kits sourced from across Asia. The store is part of a fast-growing Japanese-inspired department store chain expanding its footprint in the United States, and this location marks its second in Washington state.
According to FOX 13 Seattle, the store specializes in everyday lifestyle goods, beauty products, snacks, housewares and pop-culture collectibles, with products carried from Japan, Korea, Thailand and China. Shoppers browsing the aisles will find snacks, kitchen supplies, Korean skin care and blind-box collectible toys sitting alongside specialty kitchenware and items from the store's proprietary home brand, O'HOMNI.
One of the more unusual draws inside the new store is a selection of kits for building miniature scenes, including cafés, tearooms and libraries. Assistant store manager Ezequiel Gonzalez described them as an alternative to Lego sets, giving shoppers a different kind of hands-on building hobby to take home. Gonzalez also told the outlet that the chain now runs roughly 40 stores nationwide.
Conflicting Numbers on the Store's Size
Exactly how large the Tukwila store is depends on which report you read. The Daily Journal of Commerce described the planned location as a 23,000-square-foot store in the Southcenter area, while commercial real estate firm Kidder Mathews reported that TESO Life had signed a lease for a 23,502-square-foot space in Tukwila's Segale Retail Center. A separate report from The Registry put the figure at 24,000 square feet in a former Office Depot space. The available reporting does not reconcile the differing figures.
What is clear is the location: the store sits across from Westfield Southcenter, according to the Daily Journal of Commerce. Kidder Mathews had earlier reported that TESO Life aimed to open the Tukwila store around July in a space then occupied by a soon-to-close Office Depot, and that it would be the chain's second Washington location following its first store's debut the previous summer in Federal Way.
More Washington Stores on the Way
TESO Life isn't stopping in Tukwila. The company also plans to open a location in Lynnwood, though an opening date has not been provided, per the same Fox 13 report. Separately, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported that TESO Life's planned Alderwood Mall location in Lynnwood is expected to become the New York-based brand's largest store in the Puget Sound region.
The retailer has also set its sights on Factoria, where it plans to move into the former Rite Aid space, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal's July report on the Factoria location. Estimates of how far TESO Life intends to grow across the state vary: one report said the company plans up to 10 locations statewide, while another said 10 more Washington locations are planned over the next four years. The reporting does not clarify whether those two figures describe the same expansion target.
For now, the Tukwila store gives south King County shoppers a one-stop mix of Asian snacks, beauty aisles and miniature-building hobby kits that Gonzalez says are drawing crowds curious about the chain's growing Pacific Northwest presence.
